reCAPTCHA is the system that many websites use to make sure they aren’t being spammed by a bot, but Google has given it a makeover – and made it much easier.

Rather than having to decipher incredibly difficult-to-read letters No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA simply asks you to tick a box saying you aren’t a robot.

It tracks the movement of your mouse as you move toward the tick box and this will be enough in most cases for the software to decide you aren’t a robot, because a mouse’s movement is very difficult for a bot to replicate.

If the software is not convinced of your humanity the familiar scrawled letters will appear, but this is expected to be a rarity.

reCAPTCHA is also changing for mobile devices. As you don’t use a mouse on your touchscreen phone or tablet, you will instead be asked to match up pictures with a control image. This again is something that computers struggle to do.

All this will have the dual benefit of making life much easier for human users while hindering access for spambots.

What do you think of the new reCAPTCHA? Will it make your online life easier or were you fine the way it was?

For more incredible tech advances, check out the latest issue of How It Works, in which we show you the world of tomorrow, from surgeon robots to flying cars.